


Unplanned Intervening due to Autobiographical Circumstances

by WowSoBoring



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Friendship, No Romance, Platonic Relationships, Psychology, Secrets, Very Secret Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WowSoBoring/pseuds/WowSoBoring
Summary: Prof. Duncan asks the study group to take certain tests measuring how much pain they can hide in exchange for beer and what have you. After he implies that one character has been through more pain than the others, Annie crosses the line out of concern and curiosity.Platonic A/A fanfic for those who don't like them as a couple and for those who do too.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so, after writing like Abed/Annie romantic fics, I decided to, you know, play around and write something concerning their friendship. (because I'm simply bad at romance, i don't know zilch about slow burns or how to write a kiss but apparently y'all are too nice, thanks uwu) This fic has no element of romance in it (a couple of random eye contact but nothing serious or definitive or as I like to call it: it's written in Community style! yeah baby! [I'll show myself out]).
> 
> Time- After Virtual Systems Analysis but before Course Listing Unavailable (between S03 E16 and S03 E18)  
> (this story is in Annie’s POV except the first part of chapter one)

**POV - No one (just intro to the premise)**

“Hello everyone. My, oh, my, looking good Winger!” Duncan started as he beamed at Britta.

“Shut up, Duncan.” Jeff mumbled, “Just tell us what we have to do for our free beer and let us go.”

“Oh, alright, alright, someone’s pretty cranky,” Duncan was clearly going for a chuckle but it just sounded like an awkward snort. “I’m planning on writing a research paper as to how humans can mask their inner pain and since you seven have such spectacular backgrounds, you felt like perfect subjects.”

“I don’t get what you mean” Shirley said with a threatening undertone. 

“Uh well,” Duncan said, a little scared (because who didn’t feel a little threatened by Shirley from time to time?), “like for example, born rich but seeking validation for being valid”, Duncan said, looking directly at Pierce.

“Oh, you mean Jeff?” Pierce said. “Yeah, I know, he tries extra hard to look cool.”

Jeff looked skywards.

“So, what do we have to do, Duncan? “Annie asked with a little bit of fake cheerfulness immediately sensing annoyance in the air.

“You just have to fill these tests out and I’ll run in through a machine, and then I can make you all some bangers and mash, you know? My grandma’s recipe.”

“We don’t wanna eat Tango and Cash, you promised us beer. You think we’re stupid enough to believe that you’d cook us a  _ movie _ ?” Troy said in his best stern voice.

“Bangers and mash are a British dish, Troy, whereas Tango and Cash is a 1989 action movie that was mediocre at best.” Abed corrected him.

“That makes sense! Why would he want us to eat a movie?” Troy muttered.

“Okay, just give us our tests, we’ll finish it and you will give us each a case of beer like you promised.” Jeff said.

“Wait, I don’t want beer! Could you just give me some money? I found this amazing set of Jasmine tea bags on the internet!”

“And I’d like to buy a new doormat for my house!” Shirley joined in.

“Okay, okay fine. You people are acting like celebrities. I didn’t sign up for this sense of high ego when I came to America. So, Abed, Troy, Annie, Britta and Pierce will get a case of beer each and Shirley and Annie will get the money worth the cases of beer. Fine?”

“Yeah, fine”, Jeff grumbled, “now quickly. Let’s get it over with.”

***

**POV - Annie**

The test was weird. That was the word for it. Weird. The questions were oddly simple. Measuring the amount of pain they were hiding seemed like a test that would be very intricate and ask very detailed questions but she never really got psychology. Her experience two years ago where Duncan just made her two best friends wait for hours. That made her feel like a horrible person at the end of it and made her perception towards psychology rather biased. She was glad she felt that way because if she didn’t, she’d frankly not be a good person. The way Troy was screaming and crying was not funny at all but just for the sake of feeling useful and important she’d put that cinnamon roll of a jock through that. And to think she’d have the audacity to yell at Abed for being such a good friend when he was planning on having the time of his life watching his favorite movies, that made her shudder. That day she realized that being useful was not even half as important as being a good friend and thinking about others before herself.

And so, the questions were simple. To make up for the fairly simple questions however was the sheer volume of them. That test had 100 questions, a hundred circles to darken. Either Duncan was legitimately passionate about psychology or he was in desperate need for some recognition and money. She hoped it was the former because off the top of her head, she could think of nothing good about Duncan as a person and she was known for finding the good in people.

Obviously enough, the rest also found the test easy since Annie finished it as everyone else did except for Pierce who had trouble seeing such tiny circles even though he’d never admit it. He was finished about 5 minutes after the rest of them.

“Um, Duncan…”, Britta said

“Yes swee--I mean Britta,” said Duncan clearly snapping out of a dream (she’d frankly been having many daydreams especially concerning Jeff which she had to snap out of so she knew).

Britta frowned, “Um, yeah, I think we’re all done.”

“Okay, okay, cool, amazing.” Duncan said as he got up from his chair to collect their papers. “Let me just quickly run these bad boys through the machine.”

“I sincerely hope you aren’t trying to make us forget about what you owe us in result for graciously taking our time out to help you out with your experiment of sorts.” Shirley said, nicely (like the calm sea right before the time when it decides to let out the most violent of waves) 

“No, uh, of course not.” Duncan rolled his eyes, “Just some mandatory procedure.”

***

After about half an hour, Duncan greeted them again. They’d been doing one of their E-Siestas where they’d just spend some time in front of a screen rather than interacting.

“Oh Americans,” Duncan said in a low voice, “so scared of human interaction that they’d rather watch a screen than have some fun with friends.”

“What was that?”, Shirley said, now the violent waves threatening to come out.

“Uh, nothing. Just, thank you for filling out the tests. I can see that you took it seriously. The order for beer will be here in a couple minutes, meanwhile, Annie and Shirley here’s your money.”

“Okay, fine, I guess we could wait five minutes” Jeff rolled his eyes yet again, his eye caught Annie’s and they smiled at each other for a second but looked away in a second before Abed pointed out the presence of sexual tension or something.

“You guys really hide a lot of pain.” Duncan started again, “I mean I did hear about your high school,” he looked at Annie, “but a handsome lawyer and Abed, uh Jesus, I mean what happened to you?”

Okay, what kind of psychologist doesn’t respect transparency. She really wanted there to be a redeeming factor of Duncan or he’d just be a 100% terrible person. But then what actually happened to Abed. She looked at him and he just chuckled a bit after Duncan said his name, in an Abed way but in a way that Abed from Troy and Abed in the Morning, not Abed in real life. Abed seemed so happy and confident but then again, he never talked about his past. Except being shoved in a locker in high school? She was too intent on reviving Abed that day in the Dreamatorium to actually think about what he was saying but she didn’t want her best friend going through a lot of pain. And the thought of a person like Abed being shoved into a locker or just being treated badly made her feel kind of angry at someone for treating him like that.

***

**3 Days Later while Troy and Abed are watching a movie at the cinema**

Annie decided to dust the house. At the back of her head, she still wondered about what Abed had gone through. Whenever she tried to bring the topic up, Abed would change the topic which was not like himself but again, it was like Abed to be secretive. No one even knew if Abed was still going out with that girl who asked him out the day Jeff was competing with the pool teacher two years ago. They’d be very cute together. Annie smiled when she thought of it but then started thinking about the test all over again.

She went in Troy and Abed’s room next and started dusting Abed’s study table. She felt a book under her arm and as she looked where she felt the book, she saw a diary, the exact same color as the table titled, “My Life” in Abed’s handwriting. 

The test.

She’d get to know about the test.

She had no idea what she’d do about it or how she’d even bring anything up without being shunned but it was in her nature.

So, she checked it out.

She opened the portion where he talked about his high school experience and a tear of empathy rolled down her cheek.

And as she looked up from the diary, she saw Abed.

She must’ve lost track of time and he must’ve stealthily snuck up on her.

He shook his head at her muttering, “not cool” and walked away...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie thinks over what she just did and what just happens while Troy consoles her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really like to thank some people from a certain discord server for helping me out on this. I was kind of stalling so some aspects of Annie freaking out and having no idea what to do next were actually my thoughts of cluelessness projected onto this but I'm okay now. Much clearer vision.  
> So yeah thanks and I honestly don't care if people don't care much about non romantic fics, they're fun and interesting to write and read.

Annie didn’t know what to do. She just didn’t. Ideas kept surfacing in her brain as to how she could amend this but those ideas simply wouldn’t work. She couldn’t just buy him all seasons of Inspector Spacetime on DVD to redeem herself from breaking the breach of trust she’d recently formed with him. After so many years, incessantly trying to understand his complex brain, she finally “got” Abed even more than the others did. Now, she was wiped. There was absolutely nothing she could think of that would make all of this okay.

And she was absolutely helpless.

There was no one who could guide her. Nobody who could walk her through this and teach her how to make it up to him. No one had actually done this before that she knew of. No one had gone that far because they either didn’t care or they were smart enough to see this coming. She’d be lying if she said that the others didn’t have a care in the world about whatever Duncan said three days ago, she could see the care in their eyes. She could see the care in Troy’s eyes and she could see Britta trying to study Abed’s mind more than usual and she could also see Jeff not being annoyed and even encouraging her but making sure she wasn’t too out there.

She’d been prepared to call Abed her best friend before all this. Sure, she wasn’t his best friend but he was hers. She identified with that nervous energy and the deeply instilled insecurities he had. She understood his need for being organized and the fact that he never half assed anything. She’d been able to form an empathy link with the guy and now even though she hadn’t quite lost her grip on that link, she didn’t know what to do with it.

Tears rolled down her cheek as she lay in her bed, making a desperate attempt to brainstorm ideas.

He had been giving her the silent treatment. The one her mom gave her when she decided to go to rehab and the one she gave to Jeff and Britta when they meddled with Vaughn. He didn't yell or cry or run away and now she preferred having him yell at her for however long he wanted and let it all out but Abed never yelled. You could just call him a crazy nerd or yell at him after he helped you out with your psych experiment and maybe his eyes would look sad and his face would get all droopy but he wouldn’t yell or cry at you.  
Now that she thought about it, though, Annie didn’t think she’d be able to tolerate yelling. Ten minutes would be okay but the moment she felt someone was antagonizing her, she’d leap to defend herself. That’s how she was wired. Sure, she’d apologize but when people yell at you for too long, you start getting less scared and instead get angrier and she was pretty sure that would have happened to he--

She chided herself. She was just stalling and delaying. She had to work on some solution.

She thought of the page in Abed’s diary when he talked about the kids stealing his lunch and snatching his homework for no reason. It made her sense of empathy for him stronger, not that it was any use now. 

She decided to think about other things. The eye contact she shared with Jeff. That made   
her happy. She hoped Jeff saw something with her sometimes because all he seemed to have with Britta were senseless arguments about which bar is which. 

Her eyelids started to get heavy and she started drifting off to sleep.

***  
“Hey Annie…” Troy knocked on her door. Annie woke up from a nap  
“Yes, Troy?” she said in a low volume.  
“It’s all going to be okay.”  
“Thanks, Troy. That’s really sweet. Do you have any idea what to do?”  
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t even know if Abed’s just angry or whether he just doesn’t know how to confront you because of this sudden change in the level of confidentiality between you guys…”  
“Yeah, honestly- wait that doesn’t sound like you!” Annie started to smile lightly. “Did Abed say this to you? He’s not mad at me?”  
“Hold your horses, Annie. He still is pretty freaked out.”  
Her smile slowly faded. “I know, but it’s some progress. Look I just did it because I cared about him!”  
“Annie, he was going through pain. He’s not now.”  
“I know, Troy, it was just instinct.”  
“Annie, I know a lot about instinct. I once burnt an ant-hi--I mean nothing! But just give it some time. Sleep on it, you know? Abed is smart, he will be okay.”  
“I know, Troy” Annie smiled more genuinely this time. “Thank you so much Troy, you’re so sweet!”  
“Hey, uh, about that, uh...next time you call me sweet in front of Jeff can you also mention how awesome it is to be sweet?”  
“Of course, he of all people should know that.” she smiled looking upwards, her cheeks turning red.  
“Why “he of all people”? Oh! Come on you guys, why don’t you start going out already?”  
“That’s not what this is about!”, said Annie, blushing a bit more, the slight pink turning into crimson.  
“Yeah, right.” he rolled his eyes. “But seriously, Annie, don’t go too crazy with your thinky-ness. Just relax”  
Annie smiled. She bit back her impulse to finally tell Troy that “thinky-ness” wasn’t a word. Now was not the time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week later from the last chapter. Annie finds a way to speak to Abed while we switch to Abed's point of view to understand his insights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- the end (happy endings are the best, not gonna fight you or anything, just the truth)  
> \- thanks again to le discord server for encouragement. The movie thing was actually not my idea, it was one of those uber nice people who actually suggested that to me because I was wiped. Y'all are the best!!!  
> \- Abed's POV is kind of very hard oh my god.  
> \- I finally have like very diverse fics in here, there's a platonic one, some A/A ones and a J/A one too wow I feel like this very weird chameleon person and not completely in a good way?

Annie set up the television outside while she asked Troy to distract Abed for long enough because frankly, the HDMI cable thing was very hard to do. It took her about 10 minutes to do that and she whistled and scurried back to her room.

**Abed**

Abed was just wiped. He didn’t know why what had happened actually happened the week before. He didn’t know his way of hiding his diary was that bad, it took him a lot of effort to make it morph into the table as if it were a chameleon. He was frankly pretty proud of it since Troy never questioned it and despite whatever crap the study group gave Troy about his level of intelligence, he thought of Troy as a pretty smart individual.

He wasn’t really mad at Annie. He’d never yell at her under any circumstances but he didn’t know how to respond to what she’d done. She was Annie, his friend. He knew at the back of his head that she wasn’t trying to find some “hot gossip” about him to share with Shirley but she wasn’t exactly adhering to the ground rules that the three of them had established. Troy and he had stopped playing with her stationary and had stopped indulging in food fights and tried their best to follow all 25 rules she’d established but Troy and he only gave Annie two rules:

  1. Don’t throw out half finished dishes or change the channel while something was being recorded on the TV; and
  2. Don’t go to Troy and Abed’s room



They didn’t seem to be particularly even a fourth as hard as those multitude of rules she had employed in a very obvious and straightforward way.

More than that, he knew it was out of concern. Troy told him that too and he partly understood but he’d been hurt years ago. He was pretty content about how he had progressed from an upsetting high school experience to a thoroughly satisfying one at a community college. He’d found a home there, he’d found plenty of friends and people to talk to.

If he had to decide whether he was mad at someone, it had to be Duncan. Psychologists should ideally not disclose any information of that sort in front of multiple people from what he’d gathered. The only thing he was tired of was people looking at him as if he needed some extra help or support all the time. As if he were someone exceptionally special. He never felt that way. He knew he may or may not be autistic after looking up what Asperger’s Syndrome meant and he did identify with some elements but certainly not all. Even if he was autistic, he certainly didn’t need any help at this point of time in his life. Change frightened him but it frightened most people most of the time so he never considered that to be exceptionally different. On second thought, those episodes where he “broke” (he started screeching in a high pitched tone when something didn’t get processed in his brain) was very unique but it wasn’t because he was “crazy”, it’s because those things either didn’t make any sense (like the clock) or those things were at odds with how he worked (like empathy). The latter, he was great he could work on and was pretty grateful toward Annie for helping him out with. The former, he didn’t understand and was not willing to either.

“Hey, there’s a short movie that I think you’d like!” Troy popped in as he was still in the process of gathering his thoughts. “We can watch Inspector Spacetime after.”

Abed shrugged. Short movies never really hurt anyone and he didn’t have a problem with small setbacks anymore. “Cool” he muttered under his breath.

The movie spoke to him. From the first five seconds he knew it was a message of apology from Annie. She seemed genuine in the movie. It started with a girl reading her roommate’s diary, the roommate being mad at her but eventually forgiving her after a certain confrontation. The camera work wasn’t really that great but she did put in some effort and he had to give that to her. On another note, people don’t just forgive each other so quickly and easily in real life but then again, it was a 10 minute movie.

He couldn’t be clueless anymore. He understood Annie’s actions (he still didn’t approve her trespassing in his room but neither did Troy) but he decided to finally re-start their friendship the way it was earlier.

_**Annie** _

And so she heard the voice of her own movie outside. She had to bake brownies for paying those people in improv class so that they’d act. The camera work was done by Garrett who wasn’t all that great but she couldn’t wait to finish this project and have things be okay again. She knew she broke some boundaries. She knew it looked extremely hypocritical for her to establish so many ground rules and not follow the only two Troy and Abed had set for her.

After about twelve minutes, she heard a light knock on her door.

“Come in…” she muttered lightly.

It was Abed, he gave her a slight upward quirk of his lips and signalled a thumbs up towards her. 

She felt herself smiling triumphantly.


End file.
